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Hugh Pickens writes "Louise Radnofsky reports that a study by the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine has found U.S. life expectancy ranks near the bottom of 17 affluent countries. The U.S. is at or near the bottom in nine key areas of health: infant mortality and low birth weight; injuries and homicides; teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections; prevalence of HIV and AIDS; drug-related deaths; obesity and diabetes; heart disease; chronic lung disease; and disability. Americans fare worse than people in other countries even when the analysis is limited to non-Hispanic whites and people with relatively high incomes and health insurance, nonsmokers, or people who are not obese. The report notes that average life expectancy for American men, at 75.6 years, was the lowest among the 17 countries and almost four years shorter than for Switzerland, the best-performing nation. American women's average life expectancy is 80.8 years, the second-lowest among the countries and five years shorter than Japan's, which had the highest expectancy. 'The [U.S.] health disadvantage is pervasive — it affects all age groups up to age 75 and is observed for multiple diseases, biological and behavioral risk factors, and injuries,' say the report's authors. The authors offered a range of possible explanations for Americans' worse health and mortality, including social inequality, limited availability of contraception for teenagers, community designs that discourage physical activity such as walking, air pollution as well as individual behaviors such as high calorie consumption. The report's authors were particularly critical of the availability of guns. 'One behavior that probably explains the excess lethality of violence and unintentional injuries in the United States is the widespread possession of firearms and the common practice of storing them (often unlocked) at home,' reads the report. 'The statistics are dramatic.'"

The rest of you would be working yourself to death too if you were making $7.25/hr., had no job security or benefits, couldn't afford a hospital stay, and were afraid you would get laid off if you took a vacation. No 3-hour lunches or month-long vacations here. We WORK for a living! Even the relatively affluent can get fired or laid off at the drop of a hat in the USA.

But don't worry. You'll learn what it's like soon enough. Greece has already started. No more free rides, fellow Athenians!

While statistics do show that the US is uniquely productive, it certainly comes at a cost. You present this as a binary choice (Greek lifestyle VS US) whereas there are plenty of highly successful countries (think Germany or Switzerland) that work less. Most people likely can relate to this but for many white-collar jobs the number of hours worked dont correlate perfectly with productivity either.

When people are overworked, they get far less productive. Having worked at many locations in both the US and Europe (Netherlands, Germany, the UK and France) I find that American workers work too much hours-wise but are not as productive overall. In Europe people work less, but when they are at work, they are much more productive and healthy. When I lived in Holland, I rode a bicycle to work every day. When I lived in San Jose California, I was stopped by the police for trying to walk to work. They told me it was illegal to walk along the side of the road. Total insanity. I have also found that in Europe, you are surrounded by history and stimulating architecture everywhere that focuses on humanity. In America, Shopping is a religion, and town after town has all the same soul-deadening strip malls and consumer wasteland landscapes that grind you down and make you feel like just another cog in the machine. Try shopping in a typical town in France or Germany and you'll see what I mean. People are nowhere near as materialistic. I remember an American telling me once that he was a "Ford man", meaning that he would only drive Ford vehicles. This kind of thinking, where people's identities are rooted in how they consume and what brands they use is almost unheard of in Europe. People know about brands, but they don't base their identities on their consumption. I think that consumer culture and the Walmatization of America is a divisive, alienating, soul-destroying sickness in and of itself.

I happen to come and live from the number one country, Switzerland. WE work for a living. You guys think you work, but you socialize quite a bit, as my many tell me that English speaker meetings run on, and on and on, and on! Our work week is 42.5 hours a week! We do not have the job protections like other European countries, though we are not quite as willy nilly in terms of firing as the US. Our's is a fine balance between the worker and the employee. Simply put to fire somebody you need a reason, other than "I don't like your face." We have private health care, but everyone is required to pay for it, and we have month long vacations. We have guns like the US, but we control them and try for the most part to make sure that bad people do not get them. Granted not always successful, but we have one the safest societies on this planet.

So stop whining, complaining, and chanting USA, USA, USA, poking fun at others and instead figure out how to improve your own country. Simply put MIND YOUR OWN BEESWAX!

The Swiss army has long been a militia trained and structured to rapidly respond against foreign aggression. Swiss males grow up expecting to undergo basic military training, usually at age 20 in the Rekrutenschule (German for "recruit school"), the initial boot camp, after which Swiss men remain part of the "militia" in reserve capacity until age 30 (age 34 for officers).
Each such individual is required to keep his army-issued personal weapon (the 5.56x45mm Sig 550 rifle for enlisted personnel and/or the 9mm SIG-Sauer P220 semi-automatic pistol for officers, military police, medical and postal personnel) at home.

Nearly a quarter of the workforce in Switzerland is foreign and, as far as the Swiss are concerned, effectively disposable. When unemployment goes up in Switzerland, the Swiss just lay off some foreign workers. Working conditions and pay are considerably worse for foreign workers, at least in my experience (I don't know whether they are supposed to be). And unlike the US, the Swiss are very efficient at keeping track of foreigners in the country (regular registration and "papers please") and presumably at getting rid of them when they are no longer needed. It's no wonder that with such a system, the Swiss themselves mostly end up with the secure, high-paying jobs.

How do I know? I was working as a guest worker in Switzerland for a few years. Someone even accidentally made me an offer for the same kind of job I was doing, thinking I was a Swiss citizen, which gave me a better idea of the job market for Swiss citizens, and then quickly retracted it when I told them that I was not.

Despite the differences in pay and conditions, Switzerland is still a nice country to work in for foreigners, and fortunately most Swiss are more modest and polite than you seem to be. But Switzerland doesn't have a magic solution to the problems of economic development, unless you consider using the rest of the world as a cheap and disposable labor pool a magic solution.

Right to work does not mean you can be fired for no reason. Right to work means unionization cannot be a condition of employment.

In California, "At will" designates employment relationships where an employee may be fired for no reason and an employee may quit for no reason. In any case, firings and abandonment don't appear to be common.

Except if you live in Canada. Or Sweden. Or Norway. Or actually most of the countries in that list.

The debt [wikipedia.org] of most of those countries is significantly less than that of Greece (or the USA for that matter), yet they have a similar standard of living, free basic health care, and fairly reasonable job security.

Americans remind me of my sister with regards to talking about work: when it's useful in the conversation to be the hardest worker, that's who you are; when it's useful to talk about how little work you do, that's what you talk about.

In actual fact, I believe both. Americans definitely do work more than most Europeans (except eastern Europeans). The holidays are shorter and usually involve some contact with the workplace, employer or clients. However, I have noticed that, outside of the best and worst jobs, lack of productivity seems to be a serious problem in America. Your average office worker spends a sizable portion of the day browsing the internet (correct me if I'm wrong!). Believe it or not, this does not happen in many European countries. Still, though:

3-hour lunches or month-long vacations

what

On the whole, the problems you describe:

making $7.25/hrno job security or benefitscouldn't afford a hospital stayafraid you would get laid off if you took a vacation

Are a result of the lack of socialism in America. Haters can fucking deal with that, because it's true. Socialist policies are generally good for 99% of the population. It's good for society, doncha know.

Crazyjj is making a point that the problem is the stress caused by having to WORK way more than our fellow affluent countries. While I don't know if this is accurate, I do seem to recall articles stating the more relaxed work atmospheres and the large amount of vacation available in some European countries.

Most people in the US are lucky to get 2 weeks of paid vacation per year... INCLUDING THE HIGH INCOME PEOPLE. And if they do, they're too scared to take it because their employers make it seem like if you do, you're not a "dedicated employee".

Before everyone else starts in on the "Well he should just find another job..." Quit yellin that BS. If you have a job now, you're lucky. So you take what you can get and do the best you can. It doesn't mean you're not allowed to complain if it's difficult to change your current position.

I get 3 weeks of vacation, and 5 sick days. The 3 weeks of vacation, I had to work here for 10 years to get.

Reporting from Germany. Straight after the university (tuition = zero) I got a job with 29 vacation days (28 regular + one extra on Christmas). Sick days? Not sure, I need a doctors notice for anything more than 3 days and my employer is obliged to pay up to 30 days in hospital. Plus, I have medical insurance as does everyone around here.

Oh, and I am forbidden to work for more than 10 hours a day.

On the other hand you probably earn more and pay less taxes. Happy spending:-)

The higher pay and less taxes mean nothing because even simple medical procedures or healthcare can bankrupt us.

I had a meniscus repair in my knee last year. My health insurance sent me a nice itemized letter saying that, were I not insured, I'd have had to pay another $43K out of pocket for my surgery. I walked into the hospital at 5:30 AM and left at 11:00 AM the same day.

A few years back I had to get a root canal and crown for a tooth I broke. Out of pocket cost for the procedure, with insurance, was a hair over a thousand dollars.

The median household income in this country is $48K. Most Americans simply cannot afford what healthcare costs here, with or without insurance.

Right now I have about 120hrs sick time and about 240hrs vacation time accrued

So, after ten years, you have three weeks sick time. If you're in a car accident, get diagnosed with a serious illness or similar then you need to hope you have private insurance?

You have six weeks vacation time accrued. That would not be an uncommon annual amount with a decent European employer. In the UK, the minimum annual entitlement is four weeks. Eight days of public holidays would be in addittion to that. I notice some US employers require their staff to take vacation on public holidays like Christmas or New Years when they couldn't work even if they wanted to.

The minimum an employer can offer in the UK would be 20 days vacation plus eight public holidays. That's almost six weeks. Most large employers that I have encountered will offer five weeks plus eight days public holidays, so almost three weeks extra per year. My last employer offered six weeks plus 9 days.

Large employers tend to also have generous sick leave. My previous employer paid full salary for six months then half salary for the following six months. Again, I don't think that would be unusual from a large employer. Perhaps shorter for the first couple of years of employment.

The standard working week is 35 hours, as opposed to the 40 hours that appears to be standard in the US.

Uh I know many whites who are in that very situation. Also he said that too "Even the relatively affluent can get fired or laid off at the drop of a hat in the USA."

You can go from earning 200k a year to living on welfare in under 2 years. I have seen many it has happened to.

Also is it systemic throughout the whole US or just regions (such as say new york which has a high population which messes with the results?). Compairing say the whole US to say Norway is not exactly a apples apples comparison...

Also keep in mind the US had an interesting thing about 70ish years ago. They had WW2. In Europe people hid from the guns and tried not to fight the germans as they were pretty much taken over by 'blitzkrieg'. In the US however we sifted thru all of our able bodied men and sent them off to fight leaving behind a less healthy group. Switzerland was nearly bending over backwards to not get into it. Where does say the U.K. fit in that list?

Or is this just a 'your healthcare/guns' suck article that is all the rage these days?

You seem to be suggesting that there was a kind of perverse form of natural selection whereby the strong/fit were taken out of the gene pool due to an overseas war... Don't forget that the ones who DID survive came back and "boomed" out a ton of kids. The fit AND life-preserving among the gene pool made out quite nicely while the risk-prone were weeded out...

The Yanks butchered Jap soldiers by the fucking shipload and nuked their fucking civilians. Japanese people are healthier and live longer then Americans.

The western Allies killed a whole lot of healthy able-bodied Jerries and firebombed the fuck out of their cities, which is NOTHING compared to what the Russians did to the Germans. German people are healthier and live longer then Americans.

The fucking Brits were in WW2 for years before the US got off their asses and involved themselves, how many of their able bodied Brits were thinned out over WW2? The UK is in a similar health situation to the US, better in some aspects and about the same in others.

While that's strictly true, almost every man that wasn't disabled was in some branch of the service then; all six of my uncles were, my dad was a couple of years too young. During WWII there was such a shortage of non-handicapped men in the US that major league baseball had one-armed players on their teams.

"the US... had WW2. In Europe people hid from the guns and tried not to fight the germans... Where does say the U.K. fit in that list?"
I can't allow that to stand.
Far from "hiding", the UK entered WW2 well before the US, and sacrificed a significantly larger proportion of its population to fighting the Nazis than the US did - 384K UK military personnel died, 417K US.
Full stats here...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#Human_losses_by_country [wikipedia.org]
Of course the Soviet Union made the greatest sacrifice, by far, in terms of sheer numbers of deaths.

Also keep in mind the US had an interesting thing about 70ish years ago. They had WW2. In Europe people hid from the guns and tried not to fight the germans as they were pretty much taken over by 'blitzkrieg'. In the US however we sifted thru all of our able bodied men and sent them off to fight leaving behind a less healthy group.

Either you went to an American school or got the Hollywood version of events.

Also keep in mind the US had an interesting thing about 70ish years ago. They had WW2. In Europe people hid from the guns and tried not to fight the germans as they were pretty much taken over by 'blitzkrieg'.

ARE YOU FUCKING JOKING?

Germany had WW2 too, I seem to remember they played some kind of important role in it. I suppose it was a walk in a park for France as well then. Finland fought against USSR and then against Germans who burnt half the country and then didn't accept marshall aid(and instead paid reparations to USSR).

and In Finland someone living on 200k/year is called a filthy rich fucker.

it's not the hard knock life that is killing you - it's the opposite - and your jails. and being rich enough to eat enough.

Also keep in mind the US had an interesting thing about 70ish years ago. They had WW2. In Europe people hid from the guns and tried not to fight the germans as they were pretty much taken over by 'blitzkrieg'. In the US however we sifted thru all of our able bodied men and sent them off to fight leaving behind a less healthy group

Fucking clown.

Military casualties in WW2.

USSR: 8,800,000-10,700,000 out of 168,524,000 population.USA: 416,800 out of 131,028,000UK: 383,800 out of 47,760,000France: 217,600 out of 41,700,000

The US had the lowest military casualty rate of any of the non-axis powers.

The US is top 10 per-capita GDP in the world. This of course includes the massive rural areas that our country has in the average. Whatever point you were trying to make, "we're not making much money" is baloney.

We are not making much money. Corporations are.Look at the median income for US Americans and compare it to the rest of the Western countries.

No it isn't. Greece happened do to too little regulation in the lending market, and people abusing the lending market.SO called experts in the lending industry lied, and Greece made decision based on those lies. THAT is what happened. However members in the media in the US turned it into an anti-social policy meme

Greece should really be a poster child for how austerity *DOESN'T WORK*. Greece has tried year after year to cut its debt by cutting spending, but doing so has only sent it into a worse and worse recession that has seen tax revenues shrink. Result? Mass unemployment and social disorder of the likes not seen since the end of Weimar Germany, and financially absolutely ZERO progress.

And no, the greeks are not, in fact, lazy. Prior to this crisis, they were working many more hours than Germany. The problem is that greek industries just aren't the sectors that make a lot of profit.

I agree, the rules for storage is where the US should introduce new legislation ASAP. Make it mandatory to keep your guns locked away, unloaded, and set up a program where for one year the government covers half the cost for anyone buying a gun locker (reasonably priced and conforming to some specification). I'd bet that the total benefit of such a program to society would be larger than the costs in a year or two.

To provide some statistics: this paper [nih.gov] found that in the 12 US states with laws regarding safe storage of guns at that time, there were 23% fewer unintentional shooting deaths among children under 15, and this finding was statistically significant.

I agree, the rules for storage is where the US should introduce new legislation ASAP. Make it mandatory to keep your guns locked away, unloaded, and set up a program where for one year the government covers half the cost for anyone buying a gun locker (reasonably priced and conforming to some specification). I'd bet that the total benefit of such a program to society would be larger than the costs in a year or two.

Any "locker" that is not a safe is a complete waste of time and money. A worthwhile one for a pistol begins around four hundred bucks. We have already shot down bans on cheap guns (i.e. "Saturday Night Specials") as being unconstitutional as they unfairly penalize the poor. This is no different.

You know what else they have in countries with lots of guns and low gun crime? National health, a minimum wage two or more times ours, an education system which is intended to educate rather than to indoctrinate, and greater equality of wealth. Focusing on storage requirements is rearranging deck chairs on the titanic.

You know what else they have in countries with lots of guns and low gun crime? National health, a minimum wage two or more times ours, an education system which is intended to educate rather than to indoctrinate, and greater equality of wealth. Focusing on storage requirements is rearranging deck chairs on the titanic.

In other words... other countries have happier, healthier, more comfortable citizens with less stress and less desperation--thus less state-of-mind to kill each other?

No, SURELY you must be wrong. ALL of our gun problems are because of violence in video games, movies, and the availability of scary-looking assault rifle (because assault rifles kill more people every year than 9mm pistols, you know!). Progressive cities like NYC, Chicago, and Washingon DC have extremely strict gun laws; they are bastions of peace and prosperity!

If I'm going to speculate wildly, I would guess that mandatory military training is probably the biggest contributor to safe gun ownership in Switzerland. Ethnic and cultural homogeneity may play a role too.

I'm going to speculate that better welfare in Europe helps, too. Most criminals don't exist because they were born evil (though a lot of them do have psychological problems). Most criminals exist because crime offers them a way out of their otherwise crappy life. If someone in a ghetto doesn't have any money, but drugs offer them the possibility of fortune with a little risk, many will choose the risk and fortune over safety and poverty.

People will choose the path of least resistance. If committing crimes is an easier way to live comfortably, they'll do it. If working at a convenience store is an easier way to live comfortably, they'll do that, instead. Unfortunately, crime presents a better way of life than working at minimum wage in America. I will hypothesize that the best way to eliminate crime would be to set the minimum wage such that 40 hours/week of minimum wage would bring you to at or above the poverty line.

You see a similar system at work with software and entertainment piracy. There is a balance between the cost and availability of software/entertainment for legal purchase vs. the time, effort, and quality of pirated material. If the games cost too much, are too difficult to acquire, and piracy is easy, people will pirate. Systems like Steam which have numerous sales and allow the freedom to play on any machine have been wildly successful against piracy.

I'm not sure about that. This paper found that storage didn't make any difference.

I've never understood how "storage" works. The main argument for having a gun in the home is that the gun owner can protect himself in case of home invasion. That means the gun has to be readily accessible day and night. It has to be readily accessible to your 16-year-old daughter when she's home alone. Or your 16-year-old son.

It seems that safe storage and protection are mutually exclusive. If the gun is available to protect you and your family, it's available enough to make it easy for you and your family to commit suicide.

http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.long [oxfordjournals.org]Guns in the Home and Risk of a Violent Death in the Home: Findings from a National StudyLinda L. Dahlberg, Robin M. Ikeda and Marcie-jo KresnowThose persons with guns in the home were at greater risk than those without guns in the home of dying from a homicide in the home (adjusted odds ratio = 1.9, 95% confidence interval: 1.1, 3.4).The risk of dying from a suicide in the home was greater for males in homes with guns than for males without guns in the home (adjusted odds ratio = 10.4, 95% confidence interval: 5.8, 18.9). regardless of storage practice, type of gun, or number of firearms in the home, having a gun in the home was associated with an increased risk of firearm homicide and firearm suicide in the home.

All of those military rifles in Swiss homes are there because they were earned, not bought. Just about all males go through military service, and on honorable discharge from their conscription they're essentially listed as being in the reserves and they retain their rifles.

If you've been through the military and honorably discharged and want to own a sidearm like the one that you carried in the service, I'm a lot less worried about you than I am about any other random person. Granted, too many former US military have PTSD issues that our health system isn't addressing like it should, but even with that, we haven't seen massive numbers of mass-shootings conducted by former military personnel that were honorably discharged. In fact, there has been only one such mass-shooting in 30 years, and it was an Airman that was forcibly-honorably-discharged, who didn't want to be, who returned with weapons to shoot the military doctors that he blamed for his discharge.

Divide the number of switzerland sized areas in the US and you will find plenty that have had less mass shootings than Switzerland. These things don't happen every day. At least, not when it isn't convenient to the agendas of politicians. A coincidence I find quite disturbing, honestly.

It's already been pointed out that the reason why the United States has "high" infant mortality is that we count ALL live births as a live birth. In some European countries, if the baby dies within a few minutes or a few hours it isn't counted as a live birth and therefore isn't part of the infant mortality numbers. In one country, I don't remember which one, if the baby dies with the first WEEK, it isn't counted as a live birth. So, yes, if you manipulate the numbers and redefine "live" birth, you can end up with a low infant mortality rate. On the other hand, if you count it as a live birth if the baby draws even a single breath or twitches, then your numbers do not mean the same thing.

#1 The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and the largest total prison population on earth.

#2 The United States has the highest percentage of obese people in the world.

#3 The United States has the highest divorce rate on the globe by a wide margin.

#4 The United States is tied with the U.K. for the most hours of television watched per person each week.

#5 The United States has the highest rate of illegal drug use on the entire planet.

#6 There are more car thefts in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world by far.

#7 There are more reported rapes in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world.

#8 There are more reported murders in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world.

#9 There are more total crimes in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world.

#10 The United States also has more police officers than anywhere else in the world.

#11 The United States spends much more on health care as a percentage of GDP than any other nation on the face of the earth.

#12 The United States has more people on pharmaceutical drugs than any other country on the planet.

#13 The percentage of women taking antidepressants in America is higher than in any other country in the world.

#14 Americans have more student loan debt than anyone else in the world.

#15 More pornography is created in the United States than anywhere else on the entire globe. Eighty nine percent is made in the U.S.A. and only 11 percent is made in the rest of the world.

#16 The United States has the largest trade deficit in the world every single year. Between December 2000 and December 2010, the United States ran a total trade deficit of 6.1 trillion dollars with the rest of the world, and the U.S. has had a negative trade balance every single year since 1976.

#17 The United States spends 7 times more on the military than any other nation on the planet does. In fact, U.S. military spending is greater than the military spending of China, Russia, Japan, India, and the rest of NATO combined.

#18 The United States has far more foreign military bases than any other country does.

#19 The United States has the most complicated tax system in the entire world.

#20 The U.S. has accumulated the biggest national debt that the world has ever seen and it is rapidly getting worse. Right now, U.S. government debt is expanding at a rate of $40,000 per second.

That's complete bullshit.So is the premise that we make the most pornography, per capita.

"Mother Teresa"Mother Teresa was a liar, and a bully.She routinely claims she was getting money for the poor when it was for convents, and the Vatican. She was isolated from the public except when under tight media controls.SO using her as a reference for anything is crap. You might as well go to tobacco advertisers for an opinion on the dangers of tobacco use.

You really ought to normalize your numbers for population. The US is a pretty big country, and there are a lot of other countries where I would feel a lot less comfortable about walking down the street at night, or worse, having a woman walk down the street at night.

So yes US of A is in a big heap of trouble. Something need to be done. The fiscal clip was not a joke.USA really need to get its act together and fix the economy. And that means higher taxes to pay of thedebt.

Switzerland is at the top and has tremendous amounts of gun ownership. Our life expectancy is due to our crappy healthcare system and even worse access to it, high infant mortality, rampant poverty, lack of safety nets, etc. Oh and our obsession with fast food doesn't help either.

This is the kind of analysis I have been wondering about. Since most of the previous studies done in this area don't seem to try to factor thing like the large number of American fat asses or smokers or other choice items. While it appears to do a better job of trying to factor out some of the issues it doesn't look like it manages to do all of them or I might need to read it in more detail. But it looks like there is some good evidence that our health care system does really kind of suck unless you can afford the Mayo Clinic or other premier hospitals.

A proper analysis would be putting in perspective, not just giving you the numbers. They say smoking takes an average of 6 minutes off your life for each cigarette you smoke. If that's the case, living in the United States is as bad as being a pack a day smoker for 12 years. Now rather than an abstract number, people have something they can relate to: Living here is worse than smoking for your health.

I'm undoing all my moderation to post this, but we need to do something about this.

"Recently, Lazarou, Pomeranz, and Corey attempted to synthesizeavailable data on fatalities from adverse drug events (excluding casesof medication error). To derive their estimate of 106,000 fataladverse drug reactions in the United States in 1994, they drew on datafrom 16 studies of adverse drug reactions published between 1964 and1995. The studies cumulatively looked at 78 deaths, but only two ofthe studies had more than 10 deaths. Moreover, the 4 studies publishedafter 1976 included a total of 5 deaths, compared with 73 in the 12earlier studies. Consequently, the projection of fatal adverse drugreactions in 1994 is based predominately on data from 20 yearsearlier, when the use of pharmaceuticals was quite different. Inaddition, deaths were too few to arrive at a stable mortality estimate-- as even a small change in the number of deaths reported in thestudies would lead to substantial changes in the number of deathsextrapolated to the national population".

Gun deaths and accidental poisonings are based on the CDC's own counts and therefore potentially underestimate the figure because of unrecorded deaths. 'Adverse effects to drugs' is based on massive extrapolation from outdated data. One fact that should have immediately rung alarm bells for you is that the CDC's definition for 'accidental poisoning' *includes* both illegal and legal drug reactions. The OP is wrong, wrong, wrong.

The distinction here is between a count, and an estimate. The CDC figure is a count. Because we are counting, we should consider the values as a fairly accurate underestimate of the true number. I can argue with you all day over the specific size of the uncounted portion (given that over 600k people are reported to be missing, let alone unreported missing people, I would not discount the contribution of that), but it scarcely matters to the point I am trying to make.

In comparison, the adverse drug reactions is an estimate. It's based on a very small number of experiments, that the researchers have extrapolated out. And yes, with an estimate, and indeed, it's possible that the number of overall adverse drug reactions is far higher than 108k (Or 106k). This is not dishonest.

What is dishonest is to put the two in the same table and pretend they come from the same source. This is not comparing apples to oranges, this is comparing fruit pastiles to orchards. If we want a fair comparison, we must compare the gun deaths numbers to the drugs deaths, looking at values made *using the same, fair, methodology*.

The significance that 'accidental poisonings' consists of both legal and illegal drugs is that we affirm that poisonings, as counted by the CDC, is a *superset of adverse prescription drug reactions*. In other words, even if nobody died from illegal drugs or any other type of poisoning, the CDC estimate of adverse drug effects must be some value less than 31k. The quoted estimate, which we have already accepted to be inaccurate, is fundamentally inconsistent with the CDC estimate.

The shorter life expectancy for Americans largely was attributed to high mortality for men under age 50, from car crashes, accidents and violence.

"Our health as Americans is only partly aided by having a very good health-care system," he said. "Much of our health disadvantage comes from factors outside of the clinical system and outside of what doctors and hospitals can do."

The authors noted that Americans who lived past age 75 had higher survival rates compared with similar countries, and Americans overall had better rates of surviving cancer and strokes.

There's plenty of research, showing that high income inequality will lead to lower life expectancy, and not just among the poor.

The more economically unequal a society becomes, everybody gets more sick, even the 1%.

And it's not just physical health. There is more mental illness the more inequality grows. You know, craziness, like the kind that would make a 20 year-old kid kill his mom and 20 six and seven year-olds.

There are so many measurements of the health of a society that degrade as income inequality grow, it's not surprising that a growing number of very wealthy people are in favor of having their own tax rates go up and the social safety net made stronger. Some are even starting to take better care of their employees at the cost of stock price (the "market" hates it when workers get paid more). Costco is an example of this. Wages go up and employees get better health care and other benefits and the financial elite say, "What a chump. What's wrong with that guy, anyway, is he some kind of fucking commie?" (If you think I'm kidding about this, check out some of the stories about Costco in the Wall Street Journal or on CNBC. The CEO's name is James Sinegal, and he's decided to earn less than $500k. Wall Street hates the dude because they're afraid he's going to start some kind of trend where bonuses go down and then they won't be able to afford that new infinity pool in their houses in St Lucia.)

Homicide, they noted, is the second leading cause of death among adolescents and young adults aged 15-24. The large majority of those homicides involve firearms.

OK, let's do the math. Let's assume that other countries have zero violent deaths per 100,000 and have a life expectancy of 80 years. Let's assume that all 6 per 100,000 deaths in the US happen at age 15. How much does that affect our life expectancy?

The life expectancy difference between the US and the top performer is 4 years for men and 5 years for women. The maximum possible effect of gun violence according to the statistics in this report is 0.0039 of those years.

The report's authors were particularly critical of the availability of guns

True enough, but it was because of their preconceived notions, not because the data in the study supports their view.

You've made a fundamental error in your calculations. They said the US has a violent death rate of 6/100k. Your calculations assume that 6/100k deaths, or in other words 0.006% of deaths are violent. That is incorrect. What you need to do is divide the violent death rate of 6/100k, by the overall US death rate of 793.8 per 100k - leading to a proportion of total deaths of 0.756%.

Now, to apply the correct calculations, if in a population of people living to 80, 0.765% of them die at 15 instead:

(6/793.8 ) * 15 + ((793.8-6)/793.8 ) * 80 = 79.5.

So about 0.5 years from homicide. Gun related suicide is more often, and takes off another year or so.

Obviously, this doesn't explain the entire difference, but it can have a significant effect.

Having been around the world a couple times, I can say, the food here has a couple issues. Mostly, we are served quantity over quality. Taste is replaced with salt, processed fat, and chemical enhancements.
The only place that has food comparable to ours is the UK. Other places all the meals are about 1/2 or less of what you get here. You sit down at a table to eat. Soda has sugar, not chemically enhanced corn syrup. When I eat in the US, I get a headache for about 30 minutes after eating. Ive nver had that happen outside the US unless its eating fast food in the airport traveling.

I just skimmed a bunch of posts, and I'm wondering if more than 0.1% of you actually read any of the articles about it.

Let's see: it noted lack of access to medical care in mostly the below-median-income (i.e, half the country), due to cost.

But let's not create, say, a national medical system, like the UK's NHS, where they're all on salary, and so have no incentive to push all the newest, most expensive of everything, including what the drug co salesman left them samples of. No, we'd rather spend 25% to 75% or more of our medical dollars for multinational profits, as opposed to healthcare.

Oh, that's right, there was also an article I read yesterday, about a study showing that for-profit hospitals gave, overwhelmingly, worse care than non-profit, due to cost-cutting measures like fewer staff, and less one-on-one staff/patient care.

In today's first-World countries, having money means having access to nutrition, shelter, clothes, quality healthcare, education, and hence a greater chance to survive childhood and reproduce, and also a greater chance to end up with health habits that result in longer life. Young people don't have money, meaning that they are too reliant on the generosity of their parents. It is a sad truth that a large majority of teen pregnancies are in situations where the parents have no money either, and the neo-con approach to social responsibility and education would be laughably ridiculous if it weren't so horrific in its effects. Don't have sex, mkay? Abortions bad, why didn't those girls just shut that whole thing down? We shouldn't be supporting those lazy women who just stay home pumping out kids. Let's repeal Obamacare.

WTF do they think will happen with those policies? That all the poorly educated -lucky to get any mininum-wage job at all- members of society are going to refrain from sex until their thirties, when somehow they'll magically find themselves living the American Dream in a nice suburb, decorating the Christmas trees with their spouse whilst dressed in their best Mr Roger's sweaters, with money and ready to start a family? Like fuck.

Teenage parents tend to smoke, drink, and use drugs to a greater degree than their peers. Children born while their mothers are teenagers have significantly lower scores on standardized IQ tests, do poorly in school, and have more health problems than children with older mothers.

But correlation is not causation. If a mother has her first baby while she is a teenager, and has more children later, the later children do just as poorly as the first. So the problem is not that teenagers have children, but that stupid people have children, and having a child while still a teenager happens to be highly correlated with stupidity.

Keep in mind that 18 and 19 are still part of your teenage years.

Keep in mind that having a kid when you are 18 or 19 is usually a pretty stupid thing to do.

About 17 of them do. Your link shows a life expectancy of 80 for women and 76 for men. It doesn't give decimal places, or overall numbers, but 78ish is probably pretty close. According to wikis list of US States life expectance 17 (and DC) below 78. The US as a whole is 78.6, so Scotland's life expectancy is only a half-year or so below the US Average.

It should be noted those 17 are a) Southern states utterly dominated by the Conservative movement, b) the bit of the Rust Belt currently controlled by the GOP, or c) the District of Columbia. You can find a lot of narratives from the data to link these states, but the common denominator seems to be a) currently governed by people skeptical of government spending on health care, and b) large minority populations.

BTW, the list of top US States by life expectancy also supports their thesis. The top 6 are dominated by Democrats, with 6 Democratic Governors and 11 of 12 State Legislative Chambers being Democratic. Number 7 (North Dakota) is reliably Republican at the state level, but also likes to send Democrats, some quite left-wing on economic issues like universal health care, to the US Congress. You don't get a strong consensus that government should stay out of health care until you hit numbers 8 and 10.

The list of bottom ones supports their theory even better then I've implied. The bottom 12 or 13 states are Southern states, Oklahoma, and Appalachia. They don't have anything near universal health care in those states partly because they're poor, but mostly because the voters there refuse to vote for anyone who wants to spend tax money on anything. DC is smack-dab in the middle of that pack of mediocrity, but a) it's not technically a state, and b) it isn't really self-governing. Congress meddles in DC's internal affairs quite frequently, and except for a brief period (2009-2011) Congress has been remarkably hostile to universal healthcare.

There are some life-shortening choices we don't get to make. I would prefer stevia, an all natural sweetener in my drinks which have a long history of use in Japan, in my low-calorie drinks... somehow it's still not allowed.

And the presence and prevalence of cereal fillers in just about everything imaginable is a pretty tough thing to get around too.

And the current price of healthcare? Well, let's just say I live with a lot more [fear] than I would prefer. I simply don't think I could afford it if anything serious were to happen.

"Well I believe the puppet on the left has MY interests at heart, well I believe the puppet on the right shares MY beliefs...hey wait a minute, there is one guy working both puppets!" Bill Hicks.

ANY of you that believe that left/right bullshit is anything more than kayfabe put on by the rulers of this country to keep the peasants too busy arguing to notice they are ALL getting fucked should really try this little game i have, its called three card monty and I'm sure you'll find the lady!

Even though I'm a socialist and never cared for libertarians I recognize truth when I see it and urge all to watch the truth about voting [youtube.com] and just remember you cannot change a corrupted system by working within that system, anymore than playing a game of three card monty a million times is gonna make you a winner. The game is rigged folks, you are given 2 pre-approved shills who'll make a LOT of noise about this program or that program that "the other side" is sure to hate when in reality the same power brokers that have been leeching off this country for decades still get to have their way. Why do you think that Mr "hope and change" kept or extended every single thing the left hated about dubya's watch? Because just like the wrestler he does what he's told and reads from the cue card.

"Well I believe the puppet on the left has MY interests at heart, well I believe the puppet on the right shares MY beliefs...hey wait a minute, there is one guy working both puppets!" Bill Hicks.

ANY of you that believe that left/right bullshit is anything more than kayfabe put on by the rulers of this country to keep the peasants too busy arguing to notice they are ALL getting fucked should really try this little game i have, its called three card monty and I'm sure you'll find the lady!

I propose a slightly different twist. The peasants ARE noticing they're getting fucked, but the divisive us-vs-them tribalism mentality keeps people thinking it's the other guy that's screwing them.

Last time the citizenry was getting fucked from every which way and had only ONE source to blame, it resulted in the American Revolution. Even if the general public isn't learning from history, TPTB certainly are.

Because just like the wrestler he does what he's told and reads from the cue card.

I love your choice of words, because former governor Jesse Ventura often described politics as pro wrestling, where everyone pretends to hate each other during performance but then they go out drinking together afterwords.

As some one who has actual driven for and got change made min the government, it more appropriate to say:You are a lazy SOB who would rather make false accusations then actual expend any energy trying to actually create change.

The state of medical research today in the USA:
publishing a report where the conclusions are known in advance, and the conclusions are provided by your financial sponsors, and the conclusions meet with a pre-approved social agenda.

This report is crap. For those of you who haven't read it, let me save you some time and summarize it for you:

"Health outcomes in the US are getting better and Americans are living longer. However, we're not getting healthier or living longer-er than other similar developed countries. Therefore: DOOM!

Although our own data, in fact even our own summary, indicates that for people under 50 the majority of this disparity can be explained by transportation related deaths and violence, we prefer to emote and thus offer the following list of things we don't like as the actual reasons for not getting better fast enough:

Since they raise uncomfortable questions about the ideological conclusions which we've emoted, we've left unexplored and thus unexplained such interesting questions as:- Why do these outcomes suddenly reverse after age 75?- Why do we assert that socio-economics do not have an impact on this trend then go on to demonstrate vast disparities within US regions that show significant differences in socio-economic status?- When you can walk into any corner convenience store anywhere in the US and buy a condom for about the same cost as a bottle of soda, why are we fixated on a lack of access to birth control?

In summary: DOOM. Also, be more like Europe (we love you! call us!). Finally, spend a LOT more money on public health care (full disclosure: that means us).

That is simply not true for two reasons: First, this is appears to not be peer-reviewed, and thus does not count as "medical research" by any means.

Sorry. no. This is the National Academies of Science. This is pretty much the gold standard of peer review; you really can't do much better than that. And, yes, NAS reports are very extensively peer reviewed.

You're right about this not being "medical research." This is a review. Reviews are not original research, they are summaries of research done by others-- in essence, a review is the peer review of an aggregate of studies.

No, reports are authored by a committee of experts and subjected to peer review by another group of experts, which remains anonymous until the report is published. All are volunteers who work pro bono in service to the nation. Paid staff scientists and administrators facilitate the work of the committee. For more on the study process, visit our policies and proceedures page [nationalacademies.org].

How are committees balanced, and how is conflict of interest evaluated?

For the National Research Council's policy on committee composition and conflicts of interest, see our conflict of interest page [nationalacademies.org].

Are your reports peer reviewed?

Yes, all of the institution's reports - whether products of studies, summaries of workshop proceedings, or abbreviated documents - must undergo an independent review by anonymous experts who were not involved in the report's preparation. This process is overseen by the Report Review Committee, whose responsibilities are to ensure that the report addresses the approved study charge and does not go beyond it; the findings are supported by the evidence and arguments presented; and the exposition and organization are effective.

So, yes, the fact that it's a report published by the National Academies of Sciences does mean peer review.

, or a good study.

First, the statement I was taking issue with was the statement "appears to not be peer-reviewed," which is incorrect.

The question as to whether it's a "good" study is a much harder one. Obviously, the purpose of peer review is to try to make sure that it is a good study, but peer review is not perfect. However National Academy of Sciences reports are quite meticulous; for the most part they are good studies. There are sometimes people who disagree with NAS reports for political reasons, and hence people trying to make a case that the studies are not good because they have an interest in discrediting them. These people, for the most part, are wrong.

If there were one type of vehicle that accounted for the vast majority of all the traffic deaths then this would make sense. Gang violence is a statistical outlier in that 99% of the people are unlikely to encounter it. And that 1% who do and perpetrate it are racking up huge numbers that influence the over all results.

If you took Europe and included the Balkans back during the Bosnian conflict, their rate would likely dwarf ours. Not because Europe as a whole was violent, but because the one part was extremely violent.

If I live in a suburb in a mid-sized city in the Midwest that does not have a gang problem, then the fact that people in LA are slaughtering each other is not relevant to me.

The vast majority of gun crime in the U.S is drug/gang related and occurs in urban centers. The vast majority of U.S. is peaceful and pretty much safe...at least as safe as is your average European country.

When the Bosnian conflict was happening and people by the thousands were being killed, no one put out a report saying that Europe had a high death rate. Same thing here. You just can't sum up all the deaths and then make a general statement about the nation when the majority of the deaths are localized and do not affect the majority of the nation.

I saw another summary of this report a day ago (in a German language publication [spiegel.de]) and they included a detail missing from this particular summary. Healthcare in the US costs almost $8000 per capita, the median in the other countries was around $3200.

Pretty much everything they measured (Diabetes, Heart problems, Lung problems, whatever) the US was way over at the wrong end of the table.

Indeed. People seem to be accepting that health care is for a privileged few.

We have an American expat at work here in Australia. When he rolled his car on the highway he went home to deal with his own wounds. The neighbour called the ambulance when she saw him and despite some protests about not being able to afford healthcare he was shipped off to hospital. Quick overnight stay, xray, and a neck brace + follow up doctors visit later and he was amazed that it didn't cost him a cent.

Knowing several people in various states in the US, ranging from middle-aged to old... I'm anything but convinced. It seems to me that compared to Norwegians (and most likely to everyone in Northern Europe) you work harder for longer for less pay, and have less to show for it at the end of your life. I don't think that most people enjoys working 60-80 hours a week, knowing that they can't afford to retire... meaning they will work until they drop dead.

To quote a comment that arose over a Christmas dinner a few years ago; "What do you call retired people in the states?" "Greeters at WalMart."

The plural of "stuff I know" isn't data, but in this case it seems like the data is backing up the stuff I know. You don't "pack more into your years" - you're worn out faster by an system built to benefit the rich, and even the rich seems overall less happy than most people I see over on my end.

Interestingly though (and contrairy to your comment), most of the reasons why life expectancy is lower in the U.S. happens before the age of 50. So the probability of a newborn child to even come to an age of 50 is lower than in any other of the 17 countries.
So it's not the last 5 years that are important here (if you ever get 75 in the U.S., your life expectancy is on par with the rest of the countries), it's the deaths occuring before the age of 50 that make the numbers so miserable.

I didn't say anything about crimes. But if you insist: The person most likely to kill you is yourself, followed by your mother, your stepfather, your biological father, your significant other, your siblings and your children. If you have weapons in your home, those weapons are easily available to the persons most likely to kill you.
For some irrational reasons, people fear the weapons in the hands of strangers much more (and try to defend against them) than the weapons in the hands of people most likely to kill you.